


Spaniel Eyes

by sainthound



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Blood, Cryptids, Dark, Demons, Eating Disorders, F/F, Nightmares, Surreal, Vomit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-11-09
Packaged: 2019-07-27 07:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16214135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sainthound/pseuds/sainthound
Summary: Lady of Lambs with silver tongueTwists, sacrificial and flecked in bloodLet ye be shorn from matted hairFor women and angels sojourning thereBare their necks for her healing loveSubservient, molten, from heaven above.





	1. Chapter 1

She looks like gossamer and spun barley-sugar, and sometimes I’m afraid she might snap and shatter in my arms, fall into dust and leave me clutching at air.

I’m careful with her. Hands so close to her hips but not quite touching. Feeling the bones underneath makes me lick my teeth and shiver. They’re like a thin metal framework, when her tin-toy ribs press at my chest, when her sharp elbows jab me during the night. I wake up with small black bruises on my skin. Plague kisses.

Plague kisses, sickness kisses. When her lips press against mine and I taste pure acid through her strawberry lip-gloss. Sickness-bloom on her tongue. Sickness in her bird throat, stomach. Sickness in her salt-spiked eyelashes.

Here’s a smile on her lips and my hair around her pianist finger like a spool of chestnut. Another finger, tracing my eyes, tracing my sallow cheek. Cold fingers. I half-smile, crows’ feet creasing towards my temples, clasp her hands against my chest, and blow between my thumbs to warm them.

A suggestion:

See a doctor on Sunday. You can ask for a woman. I can come with you.

She shakes her head as I coax medicine into her sick mouth. It smells like artificial banana, white as beetle innards on the red plastic spoon.

A memory:

December; all is pale, the sky is violet by three. She crouches to pat a puppy in the playground while I stamp my feet and wring my hands. His collar is dark green velvet and one of his ears is turned pink-side out. There’s snow stuck to his whiskers. She looks up towards me and her spaniel eyes melt in her face.

A dream:

I wake at midnight to the lurid yellow of the streetlight seeping like pus through a crack in my curtains. Someone is turning a creaking metal crank in the bathroom along the hall. I turn my face into the damp pillow but the crank screams like a slaughterhouse and I sit up.

Deafening silence. Then, a slow, consistent drip.

Drip.

Drip.

She’s in the doorway and the crank has stopped screeching but there’s something dark and sticky slipping out from her sick mouth and down her pale pointed chin. It falls in oily clumps to the floor.

Drip. She licks her lips, shakily.

The streetlight outside turns her spaniel eyes into featureless yellow pearls.


	2. Chapter 2

Juno had come through decay and wasting and she had never left.

For the first few weeks she had stayed quiet and mostly out of sight. Lily could almost convince herself she was just experiencing a mirage, if she tried hard enough. The figure disappearing around the beams in the eaves was a trick of the light, the wavering cries from downstairs were just a stray cat.

The blank, reflective eyes staring at her in the darkness were just that, and eventually she couldn't convince herself any longer.

Juno never hurt her. She shivered over the back of the couch when Lily read. Sometimes she'd read aloud to her, her voice trembling like a flute, because while Juno had never touched her she had horns for goring and an unpredictable face. Those eyes... like pearls or frosted glass. Anything could be happening behind those eyes and Lily would never know.

She read 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' in a tentative tremor, and when Juno smiled she grew braver. 'The Bloody Chamber' made her cheeks flush shamefully as each vulgar word passed her lips, but Juno stroked her neck and the prose began to melt from her tongue like bitter honey.

Lilies are funereal flowers, blooming in death, wan and pale. They drink up tainted water like air.


	3. Chapter 3

"I didn't know you smoked."

Juno smirked a little at the barely concealed distaste in Lily's voice and exhaled smoke in silence. The ash at the tip of the cigarette glowed like a solar flare, before drifting to the wind like a flurry of snow when Juno tapped it. Lily wrinkled her nose.

"You'll ruin your lungs."

"No lungs to ruin." Juno shrugged her wiry shoulders. The hem of her dress, borrowed without permission from Lily's armoire, was caked in mud and something golden yellow, oozing, threading onto her bare feet. Hooves. Honey. It smelled strongly of a cellar wall cavity. Not honey. She bleated a laugh.

Lily folded her hands and shivered. "Cold outside."

"Mm." Juno tossed the cigarette on the ground, stamped it out. "Will you kiss me?"

"Unbelievable." Lily shook her head, her pulse jumping at the base of her throat. She swallowed, and the now expected fingers on her throat followed. Not grasping. Touching, gently, curiously, where her throat moved. She stayed perfectly still while Juno's warm fingertips fluttered blindly across her skin, and then drew back. Juno's pale tangle of curls fell over her shoulder as she tilted her head. "Will you kiss me?"

"No, I won't. You'll taste of smoke."

"I always taste of smoke." Juno's pearlescent eyes glinted. "I do. I do, don't I? Smoke or that horrid medicine you keep forcing down my throat."

Lily stiffened. "It's not horrid. It'll settle your stomach if you keep taking it."

"No stomach to settle." Juno smiled, close-lipped, benign. A true cupid's bow mouth. The permanent docile smile of a lamb.

Lily tutted, seized her hair and tugged that lamblike mouth to hers, kissing her desperately, hurriedly, clumsily. Drew back. Licked her lips.

Juno beamed. "Smoke?"

Her eyes were clouded. Dazed. Lily felt a pang of satisfaction at that. She swallowed again and shook her head, tilting her chin up slightly for Juno's searching, wondering fingers. "Almond. Not almond, um... apple seeds. More bitter."

"Ah. Apple seeds." Juno pulled her hand back tremulously, pressed it to her breastbone. Whether it was an absent gesture or a suggestion, Lily couldn't tell.

"If you eat too many apple seeds, you die. I knew a man who did that once. They have cyanide in them. You have to eat a lot of them, though, and he did it on purpose. He was creative. Did you know that?"

Lily swallowed visibly, and this time, when those fingertips touched her throat, she took them in her own hand and brought them to her lips. "No. I didn't."


End file.
